This disclosure relates to the field of computers. More particularly, a system, method, and apparatus are provided for inferring connections within a social community of users, such as a professional or social network, and/or for selecting electronic content to offer to a member having an inferred connection to another user.
Various types of professional networks and social networks exist, as well as other, less formal, communities of users. For example, some online services serve content or make it available in some other way to their user communities. In general, communities of users of professional/social networks and other online services have access to content made available by their host systems, which may be created by other users, by the systems, and/or by third parties.
Within a user community, members are often able to create explicit connections with other members. However, a given member may be interested in content created by another member with whom the given member does not have an explicit connection and/or is unable to form an explicit connection. Because there is no explicit connection, the given member may have to conduct manual searches to locate content created by the other member. However, not all users who desire to access content are adept at locating content that interests them (e.g., by configuring effective queries or searches), and not all users have sufficient time to exhaustively search for interesting content.
On the other hand, some influential and popular users are proficient at creating and/or locating valuable content but, as indicated above, it may be difficult for other users who have not formed explicit associations, friendships, or other types of connections with these proficient users to find such content. Thus, when a prolific user creates or otherwise interacts with new content, another user with whom the given user has an explicit social connection may be informed of the new content—in particular, they may be informed of the given user's activity that involved the content—but various additional users who are not explicitly connected to the prolific user may also be interested in the new content but will not learn of it from the given user's activity.
In addition, it can be difficult for a member of a professional network or social network to effectively or efficiently manage the member's personal user network. In particular, when the personal user network exceeds a few hundred connections, the member may find it difficult to keep in touch with all connected members, thereby causing the quality of some relationships to suffer, but he or she may be wary of unwittingly severing a valuable connection. Also, while the member may recognize the benefits of engaging with other members of the larger professional or social network that encompasses his or her user network, the member may not be adept at identifying other members within the larger network that could help him or her achieve those goals.